The implicit influence of pitch contours and emotional timbre on P300 components in an own-name oddball paradigm

ObjectivePrevious evidence has suggested that paralinguistic features of speech stimuli may influence the characteristics of P300 components when used in clinical evaluation of consciousness. However, it remains unknown what exact acoustic components of speech are influential in such tasks, and whether they are capable of interacting with attentional deployment (as indexed by P300) in an implicit manner. MethodTo study this question, we adapted here an auditory oddball-paradigm used in clinical practice (the "own-name" paradigm), and tested whether systematic transformations of pitch contours (i.e. rising or falling intonation) and emotional timbre (i.e. smiling or rough voices) on the participants names influenced P300 responses in 24 healthy participants. ResultsP300 responses to rising pitch contours were smaller than to falling pitch contours, possibly reflecting an interference of the rising contours with participant attention in the deviant-counting task. No such difference was observed with emotional timbre variations. Conclusion and SignificanceThese results suggest that the cognitive resources involved in pitch contour processing overlap more strongly than timbre with the resources required to count own-name deviants, and that rising pitch contours should be tested prospectively as a way to increase the saliency of consciousness evaluation in unconscious patients.